Friday, July 13, 2012

A court in Iceland has ruled that Visa and MasterCard's local partner broke the law in the country by blocking WikiLeaks from receiving money. The court ordered the company to resume processing donations to the website within two weeks - or face daily fines of over 6 thousand dollars. For more RT talks to human rights activist Peter Tatchell.

What will be the implications of the Libor scandal? Will anybody get into prison for the wrongdoing? What message does it send to the authorities? Should there be more regulation, or can banks regulate themselves? CrossTalking with Richard Wellings and William Black.
Follow Peter Lavelle on Twitter http://twitter.com/PLCROSSTALK

With the stocking news of PFG Best commodity broker going into bankruptcy and halting redemptions of customer funds it seems we could all need some redemption from these pirates circling the commodities markets.

In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the naked crime wave resulting from an overdose of synthetic stimulants like quantitative easing, bailouts and low interest rates. In the second half of the show Max talks to Ian Fraser of IanFraser.org about the Li(e)bor scandal and other banking crime waves emerging from the City of London.

Erste Group was founded in 1819 as the first Austrian savings bank. Now more than50,000 employees are serving around 17 million clientsin over 3,000 branches in 8 countries.Erste Group is one of thelargest financial services providersin Central and Eastern Europe.

The foundation for new all-time-highs is in place. As far as sentiment is concerned, we definitely see no euphoria with respect to gold. Skepticism, fear, and panic are never the final stop of a bull market. In the short run, seasonality seems to argue in favor of a continued sideways movement, but from August onwards gold should enter its seasonally best phase. USD 2,000 is our next 12M price target. We believe that the parabolic trend phase is still ahead of us, and that our long-term price target of USD 2,300/ounce could be on the conservative side.

Since our first Gold Report we have discussed the gradual remonetisation of gold. Last year, we saw numerous signals indicating the fact that gold was gradually becoming “politically correct” again. Due to its high liquidity and unique characteristics, gold is becoming ever more prominent as collateral. Therefore, we are currently seeing the renaissance of gold in international finance. The foundation for a return to “sound money” has been laid.

Negative interest rates constitute a perfect environment for the gold price. During the 20 years of the gold bear market in the 1980s and 1990s, the average real interest rate level was around +4%. Since 2000, real interest rates have been negative for 51% of the time, which constitutes an optimal environment for gold. The fact that the Federal Reserve will now maintain its zero-interest policy until 2014 should result in prolonged negative real interest rates and thus create a positive foundation for further increases in the gold price.

We believe that financial repression will continue to crop up in many shapes and sizes and gain in importance over the coming years. Although we are currently faced with the highest level of public debt in time of peace, far-reaching consolidation of public budgets does not seem to be up for discussion. According to Austrian economics, every act of consumption has to be preceded by production. There seems to be no painless therapy for these problems. We believe that gold is an effective medicine.

WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has called an emergency industry meeting to explore how to better protect customer money, days after the discovery that millions of dollars of customer funds went missing at now-bankrupt futures broker PFGBest.

Scott O'Malia, a commissioner at the U.S. futures regulator, invited the agency's Technology Advisory Committee to meet on July 26 in Washington.

The group, which is made up of futures industry representatives, will discuss ways that banks can provide quick automated verification to customers that their funds are safe, after the discovery earlier this week of a roughly $200 million shortfall in customer funds at Iowa-based PFGBest.

"This fraud and the fraud perpetrated at MF Global that came to light less than year ago both involve the theft of customer funds by intermediaries," O'Malia wrote in an email to committee members on Thursday. "What we need is a technology solution that eliminates the possibility of theft and misappropriation of customer funds."

Peregrine Financial Group, PFGBest's regulated unit, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday in Chicago after regulators accused it of misappropriating customer funds for more than two years.

US Inflation Rate

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